


The Lover And The Nightmare

by OwenToDawn



Series: 15 Day Lyric Challenge [12]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Assassination Attempt(s), Canon-Typical Violence, Emotionally Repressed, M/M, Non-Explicit Sex, Unhealthy Relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-05
Updated: 2019-07-05
Packaged: 2020-06-09 18:21:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,097
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19481440
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OwenToDawn/pseuds/OwenToDawn
Summary: Zevran receives nine offers to assassinate the King of Ferelden and declines them all





	The Lover And The Nightmare

**Author's Note:**

> This was really fun to write. Thanks to Lily and Nuanta for letting me geek about it as I was writing it. I'm such a sucker for this pairing. Maybe one day I'll write something happy for them. Who knows. I'm glad I was able to finish this series out finally. 
> 
> Today's lyric was "I made myself a promise/You would never see me cry/Til I make you" from The Devil Inside by Digital Daggers which just felt like a very Zevran song. Title from the same song.
> 
> Comments are loved!

It’s not the nicest game in the world, but then again, Zevran’s never been a nice guy. The ninth offer for the King of Ferelden’s assassination sits in the pouch strapped to his belt signed with the seal of a noble too stupid to know better. It’s the clumsiest of the offers. Most people know better than to leave a paper trail, let alone trust an ex-Crow to dispose of it.

Slipping past the guards is easy now. This many failed assassination attempts in, it’d be embarrassing if it gave him any trouble. Was it truly failure though, if he’d never had any intent to succeed all the times before? He darts across the walkway near the tower that holds the king’s quarters, and only the king’s, for the queen hates him too much to share a bed and stays in the guest quarters two floors away. Ah, royalty.

At least he has one thing a queen never could.

He slips by the guard patrolling by the window, taking care not to let a stray knife find its way into the guard’s throat like the first time. The first offer, the king had been so upset. Zevran almost hadn’t come back when he received the second offer, too afraid of rejection. But he’d returned eventually.

Scaling the tower, feet and hands finding the right grooves in the brick, feels like muscle memory. Jimmying open the lock of the window is even easier. The window swings open, soundless. Quiet as a shadow, Zevran leaps inside and steals across the soft plush rug that leads him right to the bed where the king slumbers.

The third offer, the king had been awake when he’d entered the room from the attached washroom. Hardly a mistake on his part. If it were a true kill, he’d have had a dagger between the king’s eyes before he could even scream, awake or not. But when the king had crooked an eyebrow up and shook his head with something like disappointment in his eyes, Zevran had felt like he’d lost anyways.

Crawling up onto the bed is difficult without disturbing its sleeper. The king sleeps lightly. Not as lightly as him. When they’d shared a tent, they constantly woke each other with any change in their breathing or position, their instincts too deeply engrained to turn off. Then again, it wasn’t like they’d ever trusted each other enough to rest easy.

Offer four had come from the Orlesian spymaster. She’d found him with his knife in the throat of some noble who was surely important, but instead of killing him, she’d promised an entire estate in the north west and a promise of protection in exchange for the Ferelden king’s head. He’d laughed and said the king were dead in two months, he’d expect her to hold good on her offer. Instead of killing anyone, he’d crept into the king’s bed and made his skin bloom with bruises from his mouth and his fingers.

“I heard you climbing up the wall,” Alistair says as Zevran pulls the sheets back. “What number is this?”

“Nine,” Zevran says, undoing his belt of knives and depositing them on the floor next to the bed before going to unbuckle his chest plate.

Offer five and six came together, one from a pirate who’d run afoul one too many times with the Ferelden law and the other from a Tevinter slaver who’s offer had been more of a bet than a genuine desire to see the king dead. It had been winter. There was a ball at the palace and Zevran had accompanied a noblewoman as her attending servant after hers ended up with a broken ankle in a mysterious accident. He’d come to her side highly recommended by a peer of hers and a former employer of Zevran’s. Alistair had fucked him in a closet with almost all their clothes on.

It’s been a few years since then and Alistair’s kisses are gentler now. He threads his fingers through Zevran’s hair and helps him out of the rest of his armor with a reverence that Zevran knows he doesn’t deserve, and that Alistair should know better than to show. He’s too soft on Alistair to take advantage of such weakness though. Instead, he lets Alistair ease him onto his back and kiss him like they’re in love.

Offer seven came from a high-ranking Warden who’s name Zevran never got. He regretted it the moment he’d relayed the information to Alistair because the Grey Wardens were supposed to be bound to each other tighter than any nation, any organization. The sadness in his eyes had been enough for Zevran to flee without even a kiss for his trouble. The offer should’ve been a sign of things to come.

He can barely stand the gentle caresses of Alistair’s along his sides. The longer he indulges the man, the more he feels like his own emotions and traitorous thoughts are clawing at his throat. In the end, he can’t take it and pushes Alistair away, legs swinging over the edge of the bed as he pants. It’s panic. Panic about what he’s feeling, what they’re both feeling, what they both continue to deny and deny and deny because it’s a _useless_ feeling.

“Zevran,” Alistair says.

Offer eight. Offer eight had been a Crow. It hadn’t been an offer, just a gloating and mocking comment moments before he’d driven his knife through the chest of the Crow sent to kill him. He’d barely made it in time. Alistair had slept easy through the night while Zevran dropped Crow after Crow outside in the garden, in the hall, on the balcony. He left them in a pile in the foyer, the closest thing to a romantic gesture he could ever be capable of making.

“Here’s the ninth offer,” Zevran says, pulling the letter out of his pouch and setting it on the night stand before he begins to pull his clothes back on. “Treason, what a surprise.”

“You could stay,” Alistair says, and the words freeze his blood. “If it weren’t for you, I’d be dead. I need someone like you as my spymaster. Someone I can trust.”

Zevran laughs as he finishes lacing his boots. “You cannot trust me.”

“That’s not true,” Alistair says and he may have matured with time but for a moment, it’s like he’s watching Alistair pout at Morrigan for comparing him to a Mabari again. “I lo-“

“I will see you when the tenth offer comes,” Zevran says. 

He leaves out the window without looking back.


End file.
